Vettel heads Canadian Friday Practice 2

Sebastian Vettel led the second Friday Practice session of the Canadian Grand Prix today. His time of 1.16.877 was a tenth of a second faster than second placed Fernando Alonso, who was followed by Nico Rosberg in 3rd position. Most of this session was dogged by severe graining on drivers’ tyres.

This session was a bit of a disaster for the McLaren team. Lewis Hamilton was 7th, and 0.6 seconds off the pace, with Jenson Button back in 11th. Lewis said on the team radio that he was “about to crash the car” as his super-soft tyres were disintegrating rapidly, before he pitted and switched tyres. Jenson was unable to set a fast lap with the super-soft tyres on a heavy fuel load, and ended up halfway down the pack.

Mark Webber and Felipe Massa improved from FP1 to finish 4th and 5th respectively. Adrian Sutil was only 0.014 seconds behind Massa in 6th, while Hamilton was 7th. Robert Kubica and Michael Schumacher were 8th and 9th, while Vitantonio Liuzzi topped off the top 10.

Jenson Button was 11th, while the two Williams cars of Rubens Barrichello and Nico Hulkenberg were 12th and 13th respectively. Vitaly Petrov was 14th, and the two Saubers of Pedro de la Rosa and Kamui Kobayashi were 15th and 16th. The Toro Rossos of Buemi and Alguersuari were the slowest of the midfield.

Once again, Heikki Kovalainen was in 19th place, only 3 seconds slower than Vettel. Also, yet again, HRT comfortably beat the Virgins, as Karun Chandhok and Bruno Senna were 20th and 21st. Their critical lack of downforce has actually considerably helped them on the straights this weekend.

Jarno Trulli was 22nd, although he had electricalm problems, and could only get 10 laps in. It was another disastrous session for the Virgin team. While both Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi managed to get proper stints in, they were more than 4.5 seconds off the pace, and filled the back of the timesheets in FP2.

While Vettel and Alonso set their final fast laps on the super-soft rubber, nearly all of the other drivers were reporting severe graining on that compound. Many drivers were forced to stay on the medium compound near the end, as the super-softs were falling apart. As the track rubbers in tomorrow, it should become less of a problem.

Unfortunately, WordPress isn’t working properly tonight, as my usual chart for driver times isn’t going on the page properly. It will be up as soon as possible.